Posts tagged Harry Potter

I’d like to say that we, personally, came up with this crazy-awesome gift guide for the Harry Potter lover on your Christmas list, but sadly.. we did not. Luckily, someone out there loves you because WB did. And it sure is amazing.

Bringing together a collection of products from a host of renowned licensees, including The Noble Collection, MinaLima, Insight Editions, Rubie’s Costume Co., Bioworld, Elope, Hallmark, and more, the Harry Potter Gift Guide offers shoppers the chance to find the perfect gift for their favourite witches and wizards in one place. Harry Potter-inspired products ranging from wizard wear and accessories, to collectibles and home décor, are all available at the click of a mouse, with each product image functioning as an intuitive hyperlink that directs users to the purchase point.

This year’s catalogue offers a host of new items, including the Harry Potter Remote Control Wand from The Noble Collection, which allows the user to magically control any IR device with the flick of the wrist. Also newly available is the United States Postal Service Harry Potter Limited-Edition Forever stamp collection – perfect for stocking stuffers and for all those looking to send their holiday cards the Muggle way. Leggings from boutique fashion label Black Milk, fresh Hot Topic-exclusive apparel from Bioworld, a limited-edition Hogwarts castle ornament from Hallmark and more can also be found within the guide.

The Harry Potter Gift Guide was designed by MinaLima, the creative team behind the graphic design aesthetics of the Harry Potter films, including the Marauder’s Map, the Daily Prophet, and The Quibbler.MinaLima, now also a licensee of Warner Bros. Consumer Products as The Printorium, is also featured in the catalogue with their fine art print of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

——– Now to the Fun Stuff ———

THIS CONTEST HAS CLOSED – Please check your email to see if you’ve won!

To celebrate this release, Warner Bros. is giving us a reeeaallly cool gift basket (valued >$60) to give to one of you!! This is seriously one of those times where all of us here at NiB are incredibly jealous that we can’t enter our own contests. If you or someone on your gift list is a Harry Potter fan, you WANT to enter this.

This is what they just might be sending you:

Harry Potter Collectible Wand

2014 Harry Potter Wall Calendar

Horcrux Bookmark Collection

Here’s how you enter:

Post a comment below telling us who your favorite HP character is and why. That’s it.

Get a bonus entry:

Link this post on twitter and include the hashtag #hpgiftguide13 as well as mention @NerdsinBabeland, and you’ll get a second entry into the drawing. (note: you have to be following us on twitter for this, otherwise we won’t be able to DM you).

How long you have to enter:

About four days. This contest is now open, and will close Thursday, Dec. 12th at 6pm, EST.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at jackie(at)nerdsinbabeland.com, or on twitter at @jackietherobot.

One day, maybe 13 years ago, my 5th grade teacher opened a book up after lunch and started reading from it. It seems remarkable to me now, 13 years later, that I have absolutely no recollection of that day. I feel like it should be some kind of holiday. It should be marked on my calendar. I should remember what I was wearing, where I was sitting, what the weather was like, what the air smelled like when I first heard the words “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” It seems actually ridiculous that a day of such monumental importance that has literally changed every single day of my life since could have been so easily forgotten.

At the age of 10, or 11–I don’t even remember how old I was, how’s that for you–I do remember sitting on the edge of my seat listening to the book practically ready to stand up shouting to my classmates, “DON’T YOU GUYS GET IT? HE’S TOTALLY A WIZARD.” It’s hard for me to believe that there was ever a time where finding out that Harry Potter was a wizard could’ve been a surprise, one of the many possible answers for all the weird shit surrounding this kid who was 10 (going on 11–like us). I was so frustrated with how fucking slowly my teacher was reading the first couple of chapters that I conned my dad out of $20 and bought the fucking book myself at the Barnes & Noble in the mall where he worked. Funnily, I don’t remember finishing it. I wonder if everybody else in my classroom was having the same reaction, this same slow acceptance that somehow, without even really noticing it happen, something extraordinary had sneaked into our lives. I wonder how many of those people with their heads on their desks changed irrevocably as a result of this seemingly-unremarkable day that my teacher opened up this book and started reading. But really, for me, at least, it started in that bookstore, in that mall, on that otherwise-uninteresting day.

If I have to explain why I loved Harry Potter, then there’s no point explaining it. Don’t you already know? Isn’t the reason that this generation loves Harry Potter pretty well covered at this point? I can’t come up with a single thing that I haven’t already heard somebody say much, much better than I did. If you love Harry Potter, then you know. If you don’t, then you don’t, but I bet you still know–is it so hard to understand why a bunch of kids would love to read about a school for magic, a school so much better than that crappy school they were forced to attend (whichever school it was, trust me, it was crappy, or at least crappier than Hogwarts, which was so fucking pimp that it was in a goddamn castle), and a few kids who go there who had the power to change the entire world?

I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone 17 times that summer. I counted. I kept finishing it and would, exasperatedly, throw my hands in the air and start over again because there was nothing else but to read it again. I remember I halfheartedly tried to read some other book, but in the end I’m pretty sure I ended up putting it back in the drawer I took it out of and reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone again. There was no number on the side of the book. I didn’t know anybody else who had read it. There was no internet in my house. I just remember being all alone that summer with these pretty crazy guys–Harry, Ron, and Hermione (they were totally off the hook)–absolutely positively dying to talk about them with somebody and literally not being able to find anybody to talk to about it. But these were some people I could get behind. They were 11–like me–and doing all kinds of crazy shit. Yeah, they were going to school, and doing their homework (it couldn’t be avoided when you were 11), but on the side they were solving mysteries and getting into all kinds of crazy shenanigans. Occasionally, and I know for sure that I was 11 by this point, I would stand out on the porch in the morning and wait for my owl to show up. I knew the ropes. I was 11. It ought to be turning up any day now. It had to turn up in time for me to show up on September 1st, anyway, or I’d miss the first day of term and that would be unacceptable. I was totally Hermione back when I was 11.

(I’m still waiting on that owl, by the way. When it comes, you can bet your sweet ass I shall be attending Hogwarts. I don’t care if I’ll be a 23-year-old first year and it’ll be all Strangers with Candy-like. Whatever. I can be that cool person who buys liquor for the 13-year-olds. No, I wouldn’t do that. Probably.)

Whatever the case when I returned to school that fall–still having not received my owl I decided I was going to suck it up and go to Muggle school until it showed up anyway–I still, remarkably, had almost nobody to talk to about this book. It was like I had made the entire thing up. I was halfway convinced I was totally delusional until some other kid in my class mentioned the book aloud when the teacher was discussing the book reports we would be doing that year. Retrospectively I almost think he was trying to do the same thing I had been–just figure out if anybody else had read the thing for the love of god. “Would it be all right if we did Harry Potter?” he asked.

The Harry Potter Alliance (HPA) is a vast network of fans spread across the world, united in their passion for the Potter stories and using that passion to make change happen. HPA consists of 60 chapters headed by known names in the fandom of J.K. Rowling including Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters, comedian Andrew Slack, Matt Maggiacomo of The Whomping Willows and author Melissa Anelli. Since 2007 the HPA has been raising awareness and funds to assist NGO’s in supporting equality, literacy and human rights. The driving force behind the group is encouraging Harry Potter fans to develop their creativity and use it in any way they can to make the world better. Their most recent accomplishments include winning a $250,000 grant from Chase Community Giving, which they plan to put towards literacy and LGBT rights programs and raising over $123,000 for Partners in Health, an organization providing healthcare for impoverished residents of Haiti.

To get involved and learn more about this incredible group of kind-hearted nerds, go here:

I asked people on Twitter and Facebook what they thought of the possibility that JK Rowling will do another two or three Harry Potter books. We got tons of great responses but one follower, HowlerMonkeys, shared this wonderful cartoon with me.